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“Those,” Jem said, “but nylon.”
“I’m sending it right now—” Auggie began.
“Auggie, we need to get going,” Theo said, voice tightening. “We agreed on a phone call. Now you’re dragging it out.”
A fractured silence followed. Some of Jem’s mental outline of Theo began to take shape as well. The big picture seemed to be that he was an asshole.
“Yeah, sorry,” Jem said. “If you can send over whatever you have, that would be great.”
“No,” Auggie said, the word subdued. “We found her. Like, we’re parked a hundred yards behind her.”
10
The sign read Chickweed Farm, and it was fifteen minutes south of Auburn, set on a bluff that overlooked the bones of the Ozarks. Limestone, Tean corrected himself as a pair of headlights swept over the stone below them, and it flashed with sudden brilliance. Not bone.
Jem slowed the Jetta at the sign, and they rolled forward for another twenty yards, following the drainage ditch and, beyond it, the wire fence that marked the edge of the property. A breeze tugged on the long stalks of Indiangrass, and when one of them brushed the fence, sparks sprayed out into the darkness. Jem swore and jerked the wheel.
“Electric fence,” Tean said.
“The Mid-fucking-west,” Jem said, rolling his shoulders. “How many poisonous snakes live here? Don’t answer that.”
The Audi was half-hidden in the brush on the opposite shoulder, and Jem turned them in an easy half-circle and pulled up behind it. Weeds crunched and rustled against the undercarriage. In that final moment, headlights picked out twin silhouettes in the car ahead of them. Then Jem killed the engine, and Tean opened his door.
A breeze carried the faint smell of chicken manure and dusty grass and hot tar. The farm itself consisted of several shadowed bulks against the night sky: pole-frame barns, Tean guessed, as well as smaller sheds that would be used as workshops or to store equipment. A few acres of pasture were thick with grasses tall enough to hit Tean above the waist, their seed heads heavy and bobbing as the wind shifted. A frame house was set off at a distance, a solitary window on the second floor enameled with yellow light.
From the little Tean had been able to read on the drive over, it was a working organic poultry farm, selling direct to consumers, although a few local grocery stores carried their chickens. He couldn’t find anything suspicious or noteworthy. It was, from what he could tell after that short search and this first, nighttime impression, a poultry farm like any other.
Except, a part of him said, Una is here. And she was in Yesenia’s room. And that must mean something.
Gravel crunched under Jem’s footsteps, and Tean followed him to the Audi. The dome light went on as they approached, and the window went down, and Auggie stuck his head out. For some reason it surprised Tean to see Auggie behind the wheel, Theo riding shotgun. Auggie smiled, drew his head back into the car, and the simultaneous thunks came as he unlocked the doors.
Tean got into the seat behind Auggie, and Jem sat behind Theo. The two men had changed into dark tees and jeans, probably because they hadn’t packed their official sneaking-around clothes. Crumbs and wrappers littered the seat, and when Jem wiped a spot clean, Auggie said, “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Jem said. “You should see our car when the girls are done with it. How many do you have?”
Auggie opened his mouth, but Theo said, “I’d like you to tell them about Una so that we can go.”
For a moment, Auggie grimaced—the expression etching his face for only a moment and then gone, but leaving behind a trace, making him look older. He nodded. “So, like I said, she was pretty easy to find. And once I did, I took some time to dig around in her social media.” He unlocked his phone and passed it back. Tean reached for it, but with a quick smile, Jem intercepted it. He scooted over so they could look at it together, his thumb sliding easily over the glass as he scrolled through Una’s Facebook profile.
“You can see she posts a lot,” Auggie said, “and a lot of it’s not, um, cogent.”
“Cogent,” Theo muttered.
“What?” Auggie said with a half-laugh. “It’s not. Plus it’s an SAT word.”
Not cogent was putting it mildly, in Tean’s opinion. Jem didn’t linger over any of the posts, but it was clear that they’d been written in a stream-of-consciousness style that didn’t lend itself to, well, concision.
—motherfuckers watching everything I do everywhere I go finding out everything I know went to the store tonight saw one an owl I think it was an owl it was supposed to be an owl its eyes I swear to God it was sent to track me followed me right up to the store thank God don’t want to think about what it would have done if I’d been there they’re always watching don’t know who to trust have to kill them nothing else will stop them—
They were all like that: seemingly spontaneous posts that channeled Una’s fear and rage.
“She’s crazy,” Jem said.
Theo grunted.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jem asked.
Tean touched his knee, and Jem rolled his eyes.
